Using the Kindle store’s Advanced Search

Like a lot of people, I’m surprised sometimes at how unsophisticated the search in the Kindle store is.

You can put an author’s name into the searchbox at the top of a page and count on finding just books by that author.

You can’t search for books that came out this week easily, or the ones that have the most customer reviews, or ones published in a particular country, or that were originally published in a certain century, and so on.

If you get beyond the page top searchbox (say that three times quickly), it’s a bit better, but still not great.

Keywords: this is the broadest category. Try anything here…authors, “Swahili edition”, Legos…whatever. If you put a minus sign in front of a term, that should keep that word from being used. If you want to see books about the Kindle, but not about the Kindle Fire, you could do Kindle -Fire. Of course, that’s an example of where it won’t work all that well…a book might be called, “Chess sets of the 19th Century, optimized for the Kindle” and it would appear.

Author

Title

Publisher: the tricky thing here is that the tradpubs (traditional publishers) have many imprints. Grand Central is an imprint of Hachette…if you search for Hachette, you won’t find those Grand Central titles.

Subject: there are a lot of choices here. These are picked by the publisher, and you may not agree with them…I’ve seen the same book classified as fiction and non-fiction, for example.

Fiction

Nonfiction

Kindle Singles

Advice & How-to

Arts & Entertainment

Biographies & Memoirs

Business & investing

Children and Teens

Comics & Graphic Novels

Computers & Internet

Cooking, Food & Wine

Fantasy

Gay & Lesbian

History

Humor

Literary Fiction

Mystery & Thrillers

Parenting & Families

Politics & Current Events

Reference

Religion & Spirituality

Romance

Science

Sports

Travel

Reader Age:

All Ages

Baby – 3 Years

4 – 8 Years

9 – 12 Years

Teen

Languages:

English

French

German

Spanish

Publication Date (this is the date the publisher tells Amazon…not necessarily the date of first publication). First, you choose: All Dates; Before; During; After. Then you pick a month, then you enter a year

Sort Results by:

Relevance

Bestselling

Price: Low to High

Price: High to Low

Avg. Customer Review

Publication Date

There you go! If you enter into more than one field, your conditions will combine. In other words, you could search for Stephen King and Spanish.

That’s better than the general searchbox, although I hope Amazon is still working on search.

One other thing: in your search results, look to your left to see more filtering you can do. You may be able to pick a particular author or series, and you typically can further filter for Prime eligible, Whispersync for Voice, and I’ve seen Kindle Unlimited as a choice. Sometimes I even see tags put on by customers, but it appears to be inconsistent.

* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.

2 Responses to “Using the Kindle store’s Advanced Search”

Bufo, I know very little gets by you but was wondering if you saw this? Am I reading it right, tap the boarder and it changes pages. If true that’s seems odd. I hold mine there. I have no idea if this is a legitimate site but thought you should see it. Here is the address.

I think instead of tapping the border, you’ll squeeze it a bit harder. I don’t think you’ll see a lot of accidental page turns, unless you start to drop it or are suddenly startled. My guess is that part of it will work well. The Verge is a legitimate site…of of the tech blog leaders.